K-12 Teacher

I have been teaching for 10 years. My first prac class, who I started out learning how to teach with as K/1 students, are now in year 9 and 10 at the very high school I graduated from. It's either beautifully poetic or the punchline to some cosmic joke...

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Casual teaching gave me the financial stability that I could not otherwise get as a disabled person, especially at a time when I wasn't aware I was. All I knew when I started teaching was that I'd lost every job I ever had except one, and going to new schools constantly meant I'd never be able to get comfortable enough to let the real me slip through the cracks and risk the only stability, financial or otherwise I'd ever had up to that point.

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Teaching meant the financial freedom to leave an unsafe situation, which I managed to do in mid 2018. That fresh start meant that by the time school went back after the Christmas holidays, I was living in an area where I'd never been to any of the local schools before.

 

Day 1, Term 1 of 2019 I get work at a new school (scary). I find out I'm in the support unit on that first day in a new school (scarier). It's my first ED class (Emotionally Disturbed... what a lovely name). So naturally, my unidentified, ignorant, naive, uncultured ass is TERRIFIED as I walk into that classroom...

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...where I feel more at home than I ever have in my entire life.

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My life changed that day. Who I was began to shift, or how I viewed myself did, so it was more aligned with the reality of who I was rather than framed through the lens of the world around me. That was my mentor's class; the mentor that saw me through my proficient accreditation. The mentor who, when I told him I was Autistic and ADHD after I learned it myself, went "yeah that makes sense".

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Years later I'm not sure if he's proud of me or exasperated (probably both, let's be real) because I have become the biggest pain in the ass most schools have ever had to deal with, and they are better for it. I regularly have meetings about dress codes that restrict my ability to care for the body I have, have to advocate for things as simple as lighting, all the way up to and including urging school leaders to confront the implicit biases in their staff rooms that lead teachers to speak poorly about disabled students. Where those biases have become so pervasive that they never expect a disabled person to be in the room to hear them... because they never believe a disabled person could do what they do - a common misconception in most white collar industries. Why else do you think disability employment organisations only ever deal in entry level positions?

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I transitioned from Primary to Secondary because the breakdown of the day into periods means my ADHD gets a mental refresh every hour and I use that bell Pavlov style to make sure I'm eating and drinking regularly (something many a teacher will agree doesn't happen anywhere near as much as it should). Teens also aren't as sensorily heavy as primary aged kids are, which provides the autism with a bit of relief. These are changes I couldn't have made without knowing what was going on with me.

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Despite all this, I'm getting older, and with age comes the compounding of disabilities, especially if you're on your own managing them - doubly so if you have key institutions in your life making it harder for you to do it yourself rather than helping you. Unsupported disability=stress on the body. As such, my body is aging far faster than my face makes it appear, adding to the load of managing my core neurologies and making teaching harder and harder to do. I don't think I'd ever completely walk away, but I thankfully have multiple avenues to explore financially that allow me to take care of myself and provide for my family - and I'll never forget that it was teaching that facilitated the discovery of who I am and the life I've been able to build for myself.